Word: sovietizers
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...come as a surprise to many Americans that fitness and weight-lifting are fast-growing crazes in Kabul and a popular cult figure is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The governor's likeness can be found at makeshift gyms throughout the city, which use cinder blocks and old Soviet tank parts for equipment. To many young Afghans, Schwarzenegger embodies the virtues of discipline, goal-setting and accomplishment. Afghans prefer the U.S. to the Taliban, but they have suffered too long from 40% unemployment and a reconstruction that never arrived. Ralph Lopez, Cambridge, Mass...
Initially conceived to forge a new relationship between the European Union and six former Soviet republics, the May 7 summit launching the E.U.'s Eastern Partnerships accord wound up more like the first date from hell. Instead of feeling the welcoming embrace the program had promised, representatives from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine instead got a European straight-arm designed to keep them at a safe distance. Indeed, given the manner in which the courtship has begun, some observers now wonder whether any of the parties involved can ever hope to make beautiful music together...
...families on both sides of the match had already seriously meddled with what had been a pretty simple proposal. An outgrowth of the E.U.'s long-standing European Neighborhood Program (ENP), the Eastern Partnership (EaP) plan called for establishing preferential development, trade, and travel agreements with the six former Soviet republics in exchange for them taking steps to create solid and responsible free market economies and democratic political systems. In that way, the multi-lateral EaP sought to strike up and reinforce ties with the E.U.'s outlying neighbors even faster than the bilateral ENP agreements had. (See pictures...
...Given that, European leaders who in 2008 had enthusiastically backed proposing the EaP to the six former Soviet republics began scrambling to lower its scope ahead of its May 7 launch in Prague. Just hours before the gathering, for example, German and Dutch officials pushed to change wording in the official document to refer to the six EaP postulates as "partner countries" rather than "European countries". They similarly struck any language that even remotely hinted at possible E.U. membership for any time in the future, and revised a "long-term goal" previously described as "visa-free travel" by EaP citizens...
Wargamers envision future scenarios emerging out of many situations: the continuing fall-out from the break-up of the Soviet Union, ethnic conflicts that cross borders, a combination of both. "What are the possible conflict issues?" asks Maj. Tom Whitlock, Special Operations Command coordinator for one of the wargames. "You can look at Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia and you can see that lines are drawn completely arbitrary of ethnic lines." The Kurds, for example, live in four different countries while even a large, apparently homogeneous country like Iran has a large Arab minority...